Hi All,

I am new to the game and need some advice on crew skils...

i am rollin with a jedi knight and jedi consular as my alt, could someone please

advise on what skills to select. I would like to craft not just gather and sell so please help.

 

Thanks

I find: http://www.swtorcrewskills.com/swtor-crafting-crew-skills/swtor-crew-skills-crafting-chart/ very useful

 

summary:

For force users synthweaving will allow you to make armor, artifice will allow you to make lightsabers (among other things). These two crafting skills are fed by archeology, underworld trading, and (for artifice only) treasure hunting. Slicing is useful because you can get schematics for augments for synthweaving.

 

Cybertech is also a good choice because you can make ear slot items, and armorings and mods for custom (orange) quality gear. The grenades are also a nice bonus (Area of Effect damage and stunning on a moderate cooldown) Cybertech is fed by scavenging and underworld trading. And again slicing is good for schematics.

 

Biochem allows you to make consumable medpacs and stims (good for all characters). The character with Biochem can make reusable medpacs and stims. Biochem also makes implant slot items. Biochem is fed by Bioanalysis and underworld trading.

 

But it looks like you are playing F2P. This means you only get one crew skill unless you pay to unlock crew skill slots. With this in mind, if you are not going to unlock additional crew skill slots you might want to reconsider your position of not wanting to do just gathering. The fact of the matter is that you could do synthweaving on one character and archeology on the other, but that would only get you premium (green) quality crafted gear which is easily out done by quest rewards. You would need to acquire materials from underworld trading to make gear good enough to use and sell.

Edited December 10, 2012 by psandak

Hi, thanks for the in depth reply :-)

I'm actually a sub now as looked at f2p and don't want to be restricted on anything.

Looking at your info I like the look of synthweaving or artifice. So I will make my mind up

At some point today. So just to clarify to make armour your crew skills should

Probably be archeology, underworld trading and sythweaving. To make light sabers etc

I should use treasure hunting combined with? What would u suggest?

I assume there is no negatives with either synth or artifice is it just down to preference of what I want to do?

When taking into account all of the bonuses from all of the crew members' skills of all the classes, the Jedi knight is the best class to have biochem on. This is primarily due to Doc ( healer companion) havering a +5 critical to biochem (crafting) and the droid companion having increasesed proficiency to Bioanalysis (gathering), giving faster mission times to gather mats

hmmm, this does make. Many thanks for this info. I think I will probably roll with bio on jedi knight

 

thanks alot

In truth Biochem is the best all round, for the simple reason once you hit lvl 50 its is still usful as everyone needs stims and medpacs for OPs and FP, you can even make money out of it

In truth Biochem is the best all round, for the simple reason once you hit lvl 50 its is still usful as everyone needs stims and medpacs for OPs and FP, you can even make money out of it

 

Not true now, probably.. Stims are not expensive, and Biochemy can't sell almost anything expensive (implants only)

Right...now im confused lol!!

Is this one of these situations were there are no right or wrong answers?

but I still assume the choices that are better then others?.

Really want to point out that for your first character or two, trying to rely on a gear craft for your leveling experience will leave you a very very very very very poor and still half the time under geared Jedi.

 

My personal advice would be to ask the community what seems to be the best pre 50 money maker atm. Cybertech becomes great later when you can craft the top tier artifact mods, but isn't as in demand from 10-50 since most mods and gear can be obtained just as easily with planetary comms and players change gear rapidly in those levels.

 

You might almost be better off picking up slicing and a couple gathering, or slicing, a popular gathering, and a popular mission skill, and selling off your wares on the GTN until later in the game when you can make credits running end game dailies to fund full blown crafting. While it's not impossible to be self sufficient with Synthweaving or Armormech or Cybertech throughout the leveling process, the recipes get expensive, the mats go quick, the missions get expensive, and all of that cost will be competing with training your abilities which gets REALLY expensive.

 

Back to point though, if self sufficiency is your goal i'd suggest either Armormech (gearing companions in blue's from armormech saves a boatload in credits and commendations), or Cybertech (creating your own mods and armorings makes staying current in orange gear more manageable), or Artifice (since both your toons are jedi, you will benefit not only from the crystals and enhancements, but also the hilts and later lightsabers). And then of course picking the appropriate gather and mission skills to compliment your craft choice.

 

I can't personally condone Synthweaving since the benefits are very narrow (mostly only your two jedi, as you will notice *most* of your companions will be using medium/heavy/droid gear with focuses on aim and cunning), and the end game product is completely useless. In other words, all you'll really get out of Synthweaving is a few flashy robes you'll quickly discard for newer flashy robes, that really only benefit you (not other players or your companions so much, though some things sell pretty well on GTN).

 

My personal setup:

Main - Trooper Commando... Armormech, Scavenging, Underworld Trading. Makes armors for his companions, my alts, and their companions too. Blue recipe is easy enough to achieve and produce and is considerably better than most quest rewards and random drops of equal level.

Alt 1 - Smuggler Gunslinger... Cybertech, Scavenging, Underworld Trading. I prefer Cybertech over Artifice or Armstech because characters tend to wear more armor than weapons, so the armorings benefit me more than the limited applications for barrels and hilts. And enhancements are easy enough to keep up well with planetary comms.

Alt 2 - Jedi Sage... Artifice, Archaeology, Treasure Hunting. Ok, so I caved and gave an alt artifice. Would have taken cybertech but already got that covered. This just compliments it well enough, though i rarely play this toon so i hardly seen anything from it on my other characters.

Alt 3 - Yeah, I'm an alt-aholic. Jedi Knight... Biochem, Bioanalysis, Diplomacy? (I'm hardly ever on this toon, so whatever the mission skill is for the rare biochem mats). Needed to pick something, at least this way come end game I can save a few extra creds producing med packs and stims for my other toons.

 

As you can see, i didn't even consider Armstech, even on Alt 3. Artifice trumps it, since it produces 3 mods - Hilts, Crystals, Enhancements - two of which are useful to any class type.

 

Last thing of note... decide what you want to do before you pick what you think you want to do. There is currently an acknowledged bug involving crafting recipes. Basically, it would seem that if you have a crafting skill, decide you don't like it, drop it, and pick up a new one... you will randomly lose recipes with the new one. Doesn't sound bad, but can cost you tons of credits and many hours of reverse engineering only to have all your effort wiped clean the next time you log in. There's no ETA on them even trying to fix this bug last i checked, so better to plan ahead than suffer till fixed. This bug actually lead to me deleting numerous characters and just starting over.

Edited December 11, 2012 by Nythain

The "money maker" with biochem is: you don't spend money, lol. Crafting the reusable health pack (at the least) will save a lot of credits and help with leveling ..... especially as a Jedi knight since you don't get your healer for a bit. Also aiding in leveling will be the added ability to kill faster with using reusable adrenals and stims. That's very under appreciated at low levels. It's not necessary, but helps a lot.

 

Major point though, even if you don't use the crew skill to craft for sales (which I recommend against while leveling), you'll save money in the long run with biochem.

Really want to point out that for your first character or two, trying to rely on a gear craft for your leveling experience will leave you a very very very very very poor and still half the time under geared Jedi.

 

While I agree with the first part I disagree with the second.

 

Yes, it can leave you VERY poor, but if you work it right you can have some REALLY good gear that will last you a while. But it does depend on how you play the game.

 

My first character was a jedi knight on a low pop server (pre server transfers). I played mostly solo with a smattering of flashpoints. I took synthweaving, archeology, and underworld trading as my crew skills. I quickly realized that gathering while questing always generated materials that were behind my level. So, I started doing missions to get materials that were slightly ahead of my level. This allowed me to work the reverse engineering system to get artifact quality gear that would be waiting for me when I reached the required level to use it.

 

However, in order to maintain this, I had to do EVERY space combat mission EVERY day simply for the credits and I had to forgo level 2 and eventually level 3 piloting because I could not afford the 225,000 credit price tag (I did eventually get level 2 and 3 piloting, but i was level 50 for quite a while).

 

On my second character, a smuggler, I leveled on a high pop server (post server transfers). I did a lot more flashpoints and heroic quests on planets. I took armormech, scavenging, and slicing as my crew skills. I tried the same tactics with this character's crew skills - staying ahead of my level so i would have gear waiting for me. However, because I ran more group content, I gained access to a lot more custom quality gear. So, typically, the artifact quality crafted gear I had waiting for me, was either insufficient to supplant the custom quality gear I had, or it was only an upgrade for a level or two at most.

 

The point is that if you play mostly solo, crafted gear is far superior to quest rewards if you work the skills properly. If you do a lot of group content, then Nythain's statement is accurate.

For the first character I would either go with 3 gathering skills or cybertech, scavenging and underworld trading. Cybertech let's you craft armorings and mods that you can slot into orange gear. Blue mods and armorings are sufficient for your leveling process. You can also make armorings and mdos for all classes which means you can keep all your companions gear up to date. You buy enhancements from the commendations vendor. If you intend to PvP a lot the reusable grenades at level 50 are a nice perk to the craft. You can also reverse engineer endgame lvl 26-27 armorings and mods which currently are BiS.

 

I find synthweaving and armormech to be expensive endeavors that will make you feel broke all the time. It isn't worth it to craft this gear and you will only be able to upgrade boots for example once every 7-9 levels making you quite undergeared if you rely on these crew skills. Note that I rolled cybertech for my first character and I was broke for months because I tried to reverse artifact gear for every level. It just isn't possible unless you can sell your stuff for decent cash on the GTN.

Right...now im confused lol!!

Is this one of these situations were there are no right or wrong answers?

but I still assume the choices that are better then others?.

 

Honestly, and I put a lot of effort into this, there isn't any good answer. Crafting is just a big nothing in this game and you don't really need it to make credits as best I can tell. And, what's worse, is that they pile on at the end with a terrible interface, the GTN, for selling anything you do make.

 

I picked 3 mission skills, send my dudes off, and sell anything they bring back which I like because I never click on nodes. Honestly, though, the GTN is such a pain to use, that I'm regretting that choice too. I didn't take slicing though so I could dump a skill and just go after lock boxes and never have to use the GTN. It's so bad that I'm considering that,

 

If I continue to seethe over the GTN, biochem is the other answer, because it has some marginal use while leveling, a marginal pvp use as an extra heal when I'm out of the pvp one's, and you can bulk reverse-engineer so it's the easiest to get good purples.

 

The whole crew skill/GTN/economy needs some serious love that it's likely to never get.

 

My best advice is to not put too much effort into it, BW sure didn't.

Edited December 11, 2012 by rainingcrazy

Hi All,

I am new to the game and need some advice on crew skils...

i am rollin with a jedi knight and jedi consular as my alt, could someone please

advise on what skills to select. I would like to craft not just gather and sell so please help.

 

Thanks

In terms of usefulness and tied to what is best for your class functionally, then biochem.

If you enjoy wearing gear with "crafted by me" tag, then synthweaving and artifice.

 

If you are F2P and only have 1 skill, then slicing because every character needs money.

i am level 21 and I have not touch the crew skill stuff... need advise, dont know how to start.

thanks

jose